Autumnal

 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun...

... And time for a flu jab, and our 10th?  (11th?  12th? ) Covid jab...

... Now all done.

Poem of the Week

To Autumn
John Keats

1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Poem of the Week

Sonnet. To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall
John Keats

Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,
Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web,
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.
And yet I never look on midnight sky,
But I behold thine eyes' well memory'd light;
I cannot look upon the rose's dye,
But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight.
I cannot look on any budding flower,
But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips
And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour
Its sweets in the wrong sense: -- Thou dost eclipse
Every delight with sweet remembering,
And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.

Balconies

Balconies, I’ve come to believe, are mostly unnecessary excrescences - fragile add-ons to buildings. Bits of ugly frippery, which are in no way essential to the rest of the structure, they are basically pointless accretions.

Now this, of course, isn’t meant to include the wooden balconies at the Globe; they are an integral part of that building, and fulfil a useful function: that of letting the audience safely see the stage. Nor do I necessarily mean the occasional rococo continental balcony sitting comfortably on a plump white building. They just seem to fit.  Especially overseas.

Also, a flat roof covering part of a house such as a kitchen extension, with a balustrade, is not a balcony; it’s just someone using their roof more efficiently.

To help with further explanations, here is a guide from 'artisiticrail'.

Balconies are classified in to 3 styles Faux, False & True. Faux styles are used to decorate a window and are for ornamentation. A False Balcony has a deck projection of approximately 4" to 6" and are mainly designed and installed to block off an open doorway. True Balconies are designed and installed to be walked on and comprised of (sic) a deck and the railing”

So the main targets of my mild aesthetic distaste are those “True” balconies (according to the above analysis) stuck on to modernist, high-rise buildings. Oh, I admit that there is a possible argument in their favour – that people cooped up in horrible high-rise blocks need a sense of the ‘outside,’ and that balconies can in part provide this. And that this is especially true of residential high-rises.

I can also admit that I have a deep and abiding dislike (alright then, fear) of heights and sheer drops that does nothing to endear balconies to me (and stories like this are distinctly unhelpful).

Also, I fear I am coming across all Howard Roark from The Fountainhead (and also like a famously-wooden Gary Cooper in the famously-poor film of the same). Dynamiting the balconies that had been added to his otherwise clinically modern architecture.

Well sorry, but unlike him I see these balconies as part of, and not opposed to, the modernist aesthetic. I really don’t like modernist architecture much either.

And in any case, if a building requires balconies to provide these outside areas, perhaps it is too big already.  And poorly designed, to boot.

And finally, balconies connect in my mind with the waves - I mean the waving - of the powerful. Kings and Popes, leaders to the led.  I bet they waved from a balcony at some point during the recent Royal Wedding farrago (we didn't watch). So balconies are also symbols of dull, earthly overlordship.

And yet...

And yet I can remember when we lived in a low-rise block, and had a balcony.

I can remember sitting out on that balcony at night, and looking at the sky.

I was 14 or 15, and not terrifically happy at school. And the balcony on our flat became for a while (I have to admit through gritted teeth) something of a personal private space.

It was a council flat – but new, and although small it was OK for us. And the balcony was cramped, but it would take me, a chair and my two and a bit inch refractor.

We were on the first floor, and the balcony looked South towards the Seven Sisters Road, over a featureless, flat, muddy green playing field – and to the right, in the small industrial estate, was the bakery that Mum hated (the Jewish Grodzinski’s, which she insisted on calling 'Grodstinksy’s' because of the perpetual smell of baking bread).  At the time there were a lot of small businesses around that area - once my brother fell through the roof of one  of these while he was out larking about with a gang (resulting in just a busted arm and being grounded, thankfully).

But it was South facing. Which meant in the Winter I could see the Orion nebula (M42), Saturn's rings and Jupiter with his moons. The telescope was just big enough to resolve the rings and hint at one of the divisions, while Jupiter’s Galilean satellites, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, appeared as tiny pinpoint flecks of light. (And looking them up, I’ve just spotted that last year was the 400th anniversary of their discovery. Amazing!).  I never did repeat what Galileo did, and estimate the periods of the moons, nor did I polish my own mirror and build my own relfector.  But Mars, when it was visible, still appeared as the tiniest of red discs in the telescope I did have, and I gazed at that.  And I moon-gazed too, concentrating (like I was told you should) on the terminator to get the most starling view.

I had books on space and spaceflight by Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, and a cheap star atlas, but mostly I just enjoyed looking at the sky.

In my head this is all connected to the Astronomical Society of Haringey, the moon landings, reading SF (this was all pre-Star Wars, pre-Hitchhiker and pre-Neuromancer, of course) and learning (some) science.  But   it is connected not so much by content, as by a common feeling of astonished awe and pleasure in the numinous (as I wrote earlier this year). And I could look out at all that stuff from our balcony.

I suspect I should reflect upon language, too. I wouln't have said 'numinous'.  Because in all important aspects the numinous is the same as sensawunda.  And the Keats poem is also about sensawunda, (and not only because of the "watcher of the skies/When a new planet swims into his ken" - although he does help to illustrate it)  - just as Patrick Moore’s 700th episode is, because he too tapped into the numinous in his own gruff, crotchety way.

So I suppose that there are balconies, and balconies…

Poem of the Week

On first looking into Chapman's Homer
John Keats

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Poem of the Week

A Song About Myself
John Keats

I.
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow'd his nose
To the north.

II.
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry-
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout,
And without
When the weather
Was warm-
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one's nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one's nose
To the north!

III.
There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good-
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby's
Little fingers-
O he made
'Twas his trade
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle-
A kettle
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle!

IV.
There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder'd.

Poem of the Week

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a faery's child:
Her hair was long, her foot was ligh,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery's song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
"I love thee true!"

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gazed and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild, sad eyes---
So kissed to sleep.

And there we slumbered on the moss,
And there I dreamed, ah! woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cried---"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!"

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill side.

And that is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Poem of the Week

A Kumquat for John Keats

Tony Harrison

Today I found the right fruit for my prime,
not orange, not tangelo, and not lime,
nor moon-like globes of grapefruit that now hang
outside our bedroom, nor tart lemon's tang
(though last year full of bile and self-defeat
I wanted to believe no life was sweet)
nor the tangible sunshine of the tangerine,
and no incongruous citrus ever seen
at greengrocers' in Newcastle or Leeds
mis-spelt by the spuds and mud-caked swedes,
a fruit an older poet might substitute
for the grape John Keats thought fit to be Joy's fruit,
when, two years before he died, he tried to write
how Melancholy dwelled inside Delight,
and if he'd known the citrus that I mean
that's not orange, lemon, lime, or tangerine,
I'm pretty sure that Keats, though he had heard
'of candied apple, quince and plum and gourd'
instead of 'grape against the palate fine'
would have, if he'd known it, plumped for mine,
this Eastern citrus scarcely cherry size
he'd bite just once and then apostrophize
and pen one stanza how the fruit had all
the qualities of fruit before the Fall,
but in the next few lines be forced to write
how Eve's apple tasted at the second bite,
and if John Keats had only lived to be,
because of extra years, in need like me,
at 42 he'd help me celebrate
that Micanopy kumquat that I ate
whole, straight off the tree, sweet pulp and sour skin-
or was it sweet outside, and sour within?
For however many kumquats that I eat
I'm not sure if it's flesh or rind that's sweet,
and being a man of doubt at life's mid-way
I'd offer Keats some kumquats and I'd say:

You'll find that one part's sweet and one part's tart:
say where the sweetness or the sourness start.

I find I can't, as if one couldn't say
exactly where the night became the day,
which makes for me the kumquat taken whole
best fruit, and metaphor, to fit the soul
of one in Florida at 42 with Keats
crunching kumquats, thinking, as he eats
the flesh, the juice, the pith, the pips, the peel,
that this is how a full life ought to feel,
its perishable relish prick the tongue,
when the man who savours life 's no longer young,
the fruits that were his futures far behind.
Then it's the kumquat fruit expresses best
how days have darkness round them like a rind,
life has a skin of death that keeps its zest.

History, a life, the heart, the brain
flow to the taste buds and flow back again.
That decade or more past Keats's span
makes me an older not a wiser man,
who knows that it's too late for dying young,
but since youth leaves some sweetnesses unsung,
he's granted days and kumquats to express
Man's Being ripened by his Nothingness.
And it isn't just the gap of sixteen years,
a bigger crop of terrors, hopes and fears,
but a century of history on this earth
between John Keats's death and my own birth-
years like an open crater, gory, grim,
with bloody bubbles leering at the rim;
a thing no bigger than an urn explodes
and ravishes all silence, and all odes,
Flora asphyxiated by foul air
unknown to either Keats or Lemprière,
dehydrated Naiads, Dryad amputees
dragging themselves through slagscapes with no trees,
a shirt of Nessus fire that gnaws and eats
children half the age of dying Keats . . .

Now were you twenty five or six years old
when that fevered brow at last grew cold?
I've got no books to hand to check the dates.
My grudging but glad spirit celebrates
that all I've got to hand 's the kumquats, John,
the fruit I'd love to have your verdict on,
but dead men don't eat kumquats, or drink wine,
they shiver in the arms of Prosperine,
not warm in bed beside their Fanny Brawne,
nor watch her pick ripe grapefruit in the dawn
as I did, waking, when I saw her twist,
with one deft movement of a sunburnt wrist,
the moon, that feebly lit our last night's walk
past alligator swampland, off its stalk.
I thought of moon-juice juleps when I saw,
as if I'd never seen the moon before,
the planet glow among the fruit, and its pale light
make each citrus on the tree its satellite.

Each evening when I reach to draw the blind
stars seem the light zest squeezed through night's black rind;
the night's peeled fruit the sun, juiced of its rays,
first stains, then streaks, then floods the world with days,
days, when the very sunlight made me weep,
days, spent like the nights in deep, drugged sleep,
days in Newcastle by my daughter's bed,
wondering if she, or I, weren't better dead,
days in Leeds, grey days, my first dark suit,
my mother's wreaths stacked next to Christmas fruit,
and days, like this in Micanopy. Days!

As strong sun burns away the dawn's grey haze
I pick a kumquat and the branches spray
cold dew in my face to start the day.
The dawn's molasses make the citrus gleam
still in the orchards of the groves of dream.

The limes, like Galway after weeks of rain,
glow with a greenness that is close to pain,
the dew-cooled surfaces of fruit that spent
all last night flaming in the firmament.
The new day dawns. O days! My spirit greets
the kumquat with the spirit of John Keats.
O kumquat, comfort for not dying young,
both sweet and bitter, bless the poet's tongue!
I burst the whole fruit chilled by morning dew
against my palate. Fine, for 42!

I search for buzzards as the air grows clear
and see them ride fresh thermals overhead.
Their bleak cries were the first sound I could hear
when I stepped at the start of sunrise out of doors,
and a noise like last night's bedsprings on our bed
from Mr Fowler sharpening farmers' saws.